


A Little Lad in Paris

by Continental



Category: Hamlet - Shakespeare, The Picture of Dorian Gray - Oscar Wilde
Genre: Fluff, M/M, Paris - Freeform, try to make sense of it (you can’t)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-04
Updated: 2019-03-04
Packaged: 2019-11-09 03:12:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 631
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17993762
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Continental/pseuds/Continental
Summary: “He kept a little lad for himself in Paris... his name was from Shakespearean Denmark and it rolled off the tongue like poetry.”





	A Little Lad in Paris

Before the end of the year, Basil Hallward was a critically acclaimed artist living in Paris; he had displayed his portrait of a beautiful lad, Dorian Gray, per request of his dearest friend, and sometimes enemy, Lord Henry Wotton, along with beautifully detailed and colorful landscapes at an art show in the early summer, and won the hearts of everyone almost instantly. The people of Paris were practically throwing money at him. Dukes and princes bidded on and begged Basil Hallward for the portrait of Dorian Gray – he had politely informed them that the portrait was not for sale, and directed them to his other works – and ladies and duchesses hounded him for a masterpiece of their own likeness.

With the unsuspected fortune that his new found “fame” (if one would call it that) brought him, Basil bought a beautiful studio in a more secluded, rural area of France, outside of Paris, with emerald-green rolling hills, and a massive garden tended to by two gardeners. The windows and doors were always open in the following summer, and he spent a great deal of time, when he wasn’t painting, sketching and smoking cigars on a divan in the summer air. He kept one valet and one maid, paid them exceptionally well, and treated them even better. They felt like family to him, and he thought of them as such. 

He kept a little lad for himself in Paris, as well, a pretty little thing of 27 years, of Danish origin, with pale blonde hair and the warmest, darkest blue eyes he’d ever seen. He was pale and thin and graceful, well dressed and of a royal bloodline; his name was from Shakespearean Denmark and it rolled off the tongue like poetry. Henry once commented that he looked a little like Dorian Gray, but Basil saw no such thing; his little lad in Paris was everything to him now.

Basil Hallward loved him deeply, just as the boy loved him; they’d been drawn together at the art show where Basil had had his big break. The Danish lad of such high status admiring his art – admiring the artist, actually, the lad would later confess – was what drew the patrons to him. He had loved him from the minute he spoke to him, with his deep, gentle voice, and his even gentler nature.

Now he sat in his sunlit studio, reclining on the divan, with a nice, but not expensive cigarette between his lips, sketching the little lad that sat on his lap, not as an accessory, but as a necessity. The lad stroked his hair continuously, like a worry stone, and kissed his forehead and cheeks and neck every now and then, as if to remind Basil that he was there, that he loved him. A little opal ring glittered on the lad’s left ring finger; they were wed from the moment their lips had first met, he had said once in the garden, dreamily, but Basil bought a ring anyhow, for, as much as he loved his secrets, he wanted the ladies of France to know his boy’s heart was with another.

The lad took the cigarette out of his mouth and replaced it with his own, his dainty fingers caressing the line of Basil’s jaw as he kissed him deeply.

Basil smiled, quite dreamily, as he pulled away from those rose petal lips.

“Will you sit still now, Hamlet?”

The lad sat back on his lap and looked at what Basil was sketching: his likeness holding a skull in his hands, as if he were studying it with morbid curiosity.

“Alas, poor Yorick!” he cried, watching with delight how Basil Hallward threw his head back in that odd way that used to make his friends at Oxford laugh.

“Alas, poor Yorick!”


End file.
